SEA-LION Summit 2025: Powering Southeast Asia’s AI Future

ByAISG | AI Products

AISG brings together developers, industry leaders, and regional partners to showcase how open, localised AI is solving real-world challenges across Southeast Asia.

AI Singapore (AISG) hosted the inaugural SEA-LION Summit: Powering Southeast Asia’s AI Future at AIMX Singapore, bringing together policymakers, developers, researchers, and organisations from across the region for an afternoon of knowledge sharing, live demonstrations, and community celebration.

The Summit marked a significant milestone for SEA-LION – Southeast Asian Languages in One Network, Singapore’s national open-source LLM programme focused on building responsible, culturally grounded AI that truly understands Southeast Asia’s languages, contexts, and communities.

Graced by Guest of Honour Mr Tan Kiat How, Senior Minister of State for the Ministry of Digital Development and Information & Ministry of Health, the event demonstrated the growing momentum behind open, regional AI innovation and the impact SEA-LION is already creating across industries.

Opening the Summit: A Vision for Regional AI

The Summit opened with a welcome address by Professor Luke Ong, Deputy Executive Chairman (Applied & Translational), AI Singapore. In his remarks, Professor Ong highlighted the core theme of the day: Powering Southeast Asia’s AI Future, and underscored the importance of developing AI that reflects the region’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

Professor Ong noted that while generative AI is transforming industries worldwide, most large language models today are trained predominantly on Western data. This means Southeast Asia’s linguistic richness and cultural contexts remain underrepresented.

Professor Luke Ong delivering opening remarks at the SEA-LION Summit in Singapore, discussing the importance of culturally grounded AI.

“If we want AI to serve our communities effectively, our languages and voices must be present in the global AI landscape.”

He shared how SEA-LION was created to address this gap: a regionally tuned, open-source foundation that ensures Southeast Asia’s languages, dialects, and communication patterns are built into the core of AI systems.

Professor Ong also highlighted SEA-LION’s progress to date, multiple multilingual and multimodal model families, over 1 trillion SEA language tokens released openly, and strong collaborations with universities, industry, and government partners.

Together, these components form an end-to-end open foundation that any developer, researcher, or organisation can build upon.

Introducing SEA-LION: Building an Open Foundation for SEA

Following the opening address, Mark Pereira, Head of Partnerships, Strategy & Growth for AI Products at AISG, delivered an overview of the SEA-LION initiative and its rapid progress over the past two years.

Mark highlighted SEA-LION’s core vision: to provide an open, end-to-end foundation that enables developers, researchers, and organisations to build AI solutions grounded in Southeast Asian languages and cultural contexts. He outlined SEA-LION’s three key pillars:

  • Data: Over 1 trillion SEA language tokens across 13 languages and dialects, capturing real usage patterns including code-switching.
  • Models: A growing family of multilingual and multimodal LLMs, designed not only for research but for practical deployment including versions that run on laptops with 32GB RAM.
  • Benchmarks: Localised evaluation tools that measure regional accuracy, cultural grounding, and safety, addressing gaps not covered by global benchmarks.
Mark Pereira, Head of Partnerships, Strategy & Growth at AISG, delivers a presentation titled 'Introduction to SEA-LION' during the SEA-LION Summit in Singapore.

“Our goal is simple – to empower the region with AI that understands the region, and to make it accessible to anyone who wants to build.”

He emphasised that SEA-LION’s open-source approach lowers barriers for experimentation and adoption, enabling the community to customise, fine-tune, and deploy AI that reflects the region’s needs.

Guest of Honour: AI as a Strategic Enabler for Southeast Asia

In his Welcome Address, SMS Tan Kiat How emphasised the strategic importance of developing trusted, inclusive, and regionally relevant AI systems.

A speaker delivering a welcome address at the SEA-LION Summit in Singapore, with a presentation screen behind showing the event title and the speaker's name.

He commended AISG and the ecosystem for championing open-source innovation through SEA-LION, noting how it enables developers and organisations across Southeast Asia to experiment, adapt, and deploy AI solutions tailored to local needs.

Celebrating Regional Talent: Pan-SEA AI Developer Challenge Winners

A highlight of the Summit was the prize presentation for the Pan-Southeast Asia AI Developer Challenge, launched in May 2025. The Challenge brought together nearly 800 participants across 235 teams, all building practical solutions powered by SEA-LION.

Five winning teams were recognised across key tracks:

Education Track – LENTERA (Indonesia)

Three winners of the Education Track of the Pan-SEA AI Developer Challenge 2025 hold a large prize check for $13,800. They stand in front of a digital display showcasing event branding.

Finance Track – PetInsure X (Thailand)

Presentation of the Finance Track winner at the Pan-SEA AI Developer Challenge 2025, showcasing three individuals holding a prize sign with the amount of $13,800.

Healthcare Track – SIMIS (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore)

Three individuals holding a large check for first prize in the Healthcare Track of the Pan-SEA AI Developer Challenge 2025, set against a backdrop displaying the event title and sponsors.

Public Sector – Archival AI (Singapore)

Two individuals stand on stage at the Pan-SEA AI Developer Challenge 2025 prize presentation, holding a large check for the Public Sector Track's first prize of $13,800, with a backdrop displaying the event's branding.

Most Innovative Prize – Zipo (Indonesia)

Three winners holding a large certificate that reads 'Most Innovative Use of SEA-LION Models' along with a cash prize, smiling during the Pan-SEA AI Developer Challenge 2025 prize presentation.

Live Demonstrations: Turning Ideas Into Impact

The Summit then showcased live demos from each winning team, offering a firsthand look at SEA-LION–powered innovations addressing real-world challenges across the region. Presentations covered:

  • Low-connectivity educational infrastructure
  • AI-assisted health instructions
  • Multilingual financial services
  • Digital heritage preservation
  • Accessible personalised learning

These demos demonstrated SEA-LION’s ability to support meaningful, on-the-ground applications in diverse operational environments.

Industry Use Case Showcase: AWARE x Workato

Representatives from AWARE and Workato presented a practical implementation of SEA-LION enabling a system to support assessment of volunteers.

A speaker presenting at the SEA-LION Industry Showcase during the AIMX Singapore event, with a slide detailing the partnership between AWARE and Workato.

The system supports volunteer assessment by matching volunteers to the right roles and accelerating deployment, this system delivers faster, higher-quality support to more people – strengthening communities and scaling care where it’s needed most.

Panel Discussion: The Future of SEA Language LLMs

A panel featuring Dr Leslie Teo (AI Singapore), Dr Wenxuan Zhang (SUTD), and Brian Lim (Wisma AI), moderated by Koo Ping Shung, explored the challenges and opportunities in scaling LLMs for Southeast Asian languages.

Key takeaways:

  • Regional-tuned LLMs are gaining traction, with enterprises adopting SEA-LION for customer service, B2B operations, and supplier workflows where Western models lack contextual understanding.
  • Key ecosystem challenges include:
    • Talent gaps requiring bilingual, cross-functional teams
    • Trust & safety failures in Southeast Asian languages
    • Fragmented and inconsistent data affecting model quality
  • Dynamic regional benchmarks like SEA-HELM and SEA-Exam are crucial for evaluating performance and setting culturally aligned guardrails.
  • Successful integration requires:
    • Simplified deployment pathways
    • Clear value identification (revenue uplift or cost reduction)
    • Multidisciplinary teams supported by leadership
  • Continuous feedback loops are essential, with developers encouraged to report failure cases to improve models and safety systems.
  • Future priorities: multilinguality, multimodality, compute efficiency, and managing cost–performance trade-offs for real-world applications.
  • Call to action: contribute data, feedback, and use cases to strengthen Southeast Asia’s LLM ecosystem and build a shared ASEAN AI identity.

Panelists agreed that Southeast Asia presents a unique but promising environment for multilingual AI and that initiatives like SEA-LION are critical for unlocking this potential.

A group of four speakers posing for a photo at the SEA-LION Summit, with a presentation screen in the background displaying the title 'Scaling Southeast Asia Language LLMs: Challenges, Opportunities & Use Cases'.

Closing Reflections: A Growing Global Movement

In his closing remarks, Dr Leslie Teo, Senior Director, AI Products at AISG, noted SEA-LION’s rapid evolution from an idea into a regional, and increasingly global movement.

A speaker at the AIMX Singapore event expresses gratitude to contributors of the SEA-LION initiative, with a backdrop displaying various logos of supporting organizations.

“Our deepest gratitude goes to every partner who has walked this journey with us. Your support has turned SEA-LION from an idea into a regional foundation — one that now inspires interest far beyond Southeast Asia.”

He encouraged developers, researchers, and enterprises to continue engaging with SEA-LION through its open models, datasets, benchmarks, and community channels, reaffirming AISG’s commitment to an open, collaborative, and trustworthy AI ecosystem for Southeast Asia.

Conclusion: Building AI That Reflects Southeast Asia

The inaugural SEA-LION Summit demonstrated the strength and momentum of Southeast Asia’s AI community. Across keynotes, showcases, and discussions, one message was clear:

Southeast Asia needs AI that understands Southeast Asia, and SEA-LION is enabling exactly that.

With growing adoption, a vibrant developer community, and strong industry partnerships, SEA-LION is becoming a foundational asset for the region’s digital future. AISG welcomes all partners, developers, and organisations to join the movement.

Check out some of our links here:
Pan-SEA Developer Challenge website
SEA-LION models